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Rechy was born March 10, 1931 in El Paso, Texas.[1][2][3] He was the youngest of five children born to Guadalupe (née Flores) and Roberto Sixto Rechy.[4] Both of Rechy's parents were natives of Mexico, his father was of Scottish lineage.[2][5][6]

Following graduation from college, Rechy enlisted in the U.S. Army. He was granted early release from the Army to enroll as a graduate student at Columbia University.[7] He applied for admission to a creative writing class taught by novelist Pearl S. Buck by submitting an unpublished novel he had written titled "Pablo!"[8] While his application to Buck's class was not accepted, Rechy was admitted into the writing classes of Hiram Haydn, a senior editor at Random House, at the New School for Social Research.[8]

Rechy's first published work, the largely autobiographical novel City of Night, debuted in October 1963. Despite the predominately negative reviews the book received at the time of its publication, City of Night became an international bestseller. It is now widely recognized as a "modern classic"[4][9][10]

Rechy was cited, by journalist Amy Harmon, in a 2004 New York Times article that reported about a computer glitch on Amazon.com that suddenly revealed the identities of thousands of people who had anonymously posted book reviews. It was revealed that Rechy, among several other authors, had "pseudonymously written themselves five-star reviews, Amazon's highest rating" Amazon consequently stopped accepting anonymous reviews as a result of this finding.[11]